About me

My name is Shiling Liang¹. I am a final-year PhD student at the Laboratory of Statistical Biophysics, EPFL. Before I started my PhD, I obtained M.Sc. in Physics at EPFL and B.Sc. in Physics from Beijing Normal University and the University of Manchester².

My main research interest is on non-equilibrium thermodynamics and its application to biochemical systems. During my master and beginning of PhD, I was investigating how a temperature gradient can break symmetries in both chemical and real space, which may lead to the origin of life. Recently, I am working to reveal the thermodynamic cost to break symmetries in biochemical systems. I am also interested in stochastic thermodynamics, all kinds of thermo-kinetic bounds in stochastic and out-of-equilibrium systems. I enjoy understanding the world by building minimal models.

If my research resonates with you and you'd like to discuss it further, please don't hesitate to email me.

News

_{2024.07.17 The thermodynamics bounds of biochemical systems Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 228402 got upgraded! Now we can define the thermodynamic space for general chemical reaction networks involving muti-molecular reactions (i.e. hypergraph CRNs). Here is the preprint: arXiv:2407.11498.
2024.05.04 I will attend the Frontiers in Non-equilibrium Physics workshop in Kyoto from 07th to 20th July, 2024.}

Selected Publications

$\color{black} \blacktriangleright$ Thermodynamic Costs of Symmetry Breaking

Thermodynamic Space of Chemical Reaction Networks

_{S. Liang, P. De Los Rios & D. M. Busiello}
arXiv: 2308.14497 (2024)

$\color{red}\blacksquare$ Thermodynamically accessible phase space for (non-equilibrium) chemical reaction networks at stationarity.

Thermodynamic bounds on symmetry breaking in linear and catalytic biochemical systems

_{S. Liang, P. De Los Rios & D. M. Busiello}
Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 228402 (2024)
_{Poster | Video}

$\color{red}\blacksquare$ Network geometry reveals universal thermodynamic bounds in various of biochemical systems, ranging from the error rate of kinetic proofreading to the contrast of reaction-diffusion pattern.

Thermodynamic bounds on time-reversal asymmetry

_{S. Liang & S. Pigolotti}
Phys. Rev. E 108, L062101 (Letter) (2023)

$\color{red}\blacksquare$ Temporal-coarse-grained measure of time-reversal asymmetry can be used to infer non-equilibrium driving forces.

$\color{black} \blacktriangleright$ Finite-Time Thermodynamics

A Minimal Model for Carnot Efficiency at Maximum Power

_{S. Liang, Y.-H. Ma, D. M. Busiello & P. De Los Rios}
arXiv 2312.02323 (2023)

$\color{red}\blacksquare$ A minimal model reveal the attainability of Carnot efficiency at maximum power.

$\color{black} \blacktriangleright$ Chemical Systems in Non-Isothermal Environments

Emergent thermophoretic behavior in chemical reaction systems

_{S. Liang, D. M. Busiello & P. De Los Rios}
New Journal of Physics 24 123006 (2022)
_{Poster | Summary}

$\color{red}\blacksquare$ Thermophoresis can emerge from reaction-diffusion system. Favouring cold or hot regions depends on the correlation between transport properties and energies.

Dissipation-driven selection of states in non-equilibrium chemical networks

_{D. M. Busiello, S. Liang, F. Piazza & P. De Los Rios}
Communication Chemistry 4 16 (2021)

$\color{red}\blacksquare$ Chemical reaction network with kinetic asymmetry can harvest thermal energy to break symmetry in chemical space.